Where the jobs will be in 2008

America's top employers expand retail, health-care positions

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The hiring picture for 2008 appears to be one of steady growth at many of America's biggest employers, with retiring baby boomers and the weak U.S. dollar creating new opportunities in some surprising areas.

As the nation's employers gear up to start a wave of new-year hiring, the retail and health-care sectors are poised for the most public expansions, while the hospitality and export industries are angling for new employees as well, economists and job market experts said.

Among the many retailers that will be looking to staff new stores in 2008:

Wal-MartWMT, +0.30%
the world's largest retailer, plans to add 25 million to 27 million square feet of new store space among its Wal-Mart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets and Sam's Clubs, spokesman John Simley said. That translates into 220 new stores in the U.S. next year, including some that are relocations or expansions, he said. "We are expanding next year, but we don't give a hiring forecast." A Wal-Mart store generally requires a couple hundred workers, Simley said. "With every new store, there are entry-level positions and there are supervisor positions, management positions."

J.C. PenneyJCP, +1.27%
estimates it will have 7,500 positions to fill next year, spokesman Tim Lyons said. "We opened 50 stores this year and our plan is to continue that pace approximately through 2011," Lyons said. "In each one of the stores we'll be hiring -- store managers and sales associates -- a combination of hourly and salaried, part time and full time." A J.C. Penney store typically requires 150 to 200 workers, and finding experienced retail managers, supervisors and associates remains a top recruiting priority, he said.

To accommodate the holiday rush, United Parcel ServiceUPS, +0.59%
has added about 60,000 seasonal workers to its work force through the end of December, a figure that's about the same as last year, spokeswoman Elizabeth Rasberry said. The seasonal hires tend to be facility-based package handlers and driver-helpers, who ride in vehicles to assist in deliveries. The company has a strong promote-from-within culture, with many seasonal workers eventually converting to full-time employees. Among positions requiring a college degree, UPS continually looks for mechanical, civil and industrial engineers; and people schooled in business, computer science and economics to add to its 360,600-employee domestic work force, Rasberry said. "We're heavy on the [industrial engineering] side internally because so much of our business is around human engineering, process engineering, time-process studies."

Health-care jobs will be on offer at CVS CaremarkCVS, +0.34%
next year. The drugstore chain expects to add an unspecified number of new positions, including pharmacists, to work in all parts of the company -- mail, specialty and retail pharmacies, spokeswoman Carolyn Castel said. CVS Caremark also plans to hire nurse practitioners as it expands its seven-day-a-week retail clinic called MinuteClinic to new locations, she said. "We added 300 MinuteClinics [in 2007] and expect to be in that same arena in '08."

Many other big employers contacted for this story, including Kroger, IBM, General Motors and Home Depot, either hadn't yet assembled their 2008 hiring plans or declined to discuss them.

Executives and bankruptcy lawyers

Despite the fallout from the credit crisis, the hiring market for executives is expected to be brisk next year due to the ongoing trend of retiring baby boomers, said Peter Felix, president of the New York-based Association of Executive Search Consultants, which represents 6,000 search professionals worldwide. Still, the rush to fill executive suites here pales in comparison to the talent shortage in developing countries such as China and India, he said.

"It's a mature market," Felix said of the U.S. "The supply of top talent is under pressure, but it's nothing like the dramatic situation you're finding in some of these emerging markets. You have a much deeper reservoir of competent, trained people in the executive ranks here in the U.S."

While the outlook for mortgage brokers is expected to decline next year in the wake of the housing downturn, people involved in working out loans, collections or selling foreclosed real estate may hear their phones ring more often, said Alan Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates, a New York-based compensation consulting firm that closely tracks financial services and related firms.

"Those jobs are going to do really well," Johnson said. "If you're a bankruptcy attorney, now your day is coming. Many of the big law firms have beefed up their bankruptcy practices."

Going global

Sometimes skills and not specific job titles come into favor. Next year professionals who speak multiple languages or who've lived in other countries may find their skills newly valuable as more companies seek to do business on a global stage, said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray and Christmas, an outplacement firm in Chicago.

Some firms will be able to take advantage of the weak U.S. dollar to explore new markets around the world, he said.

"The global economy is growing by leaps and bounds, and U.S. businesses' participation in that growth is key to the success of our economy in the short term and the long term," Challenger said. "If you're a small manufacturer and you wanted to grow your business overseas -- and as a small manufacturer the weak U.S. dollar might help you a little bit -- you might say I need to hire people to count on to manage relationships I'm starting with customers in South America or suppliers in China."

"What's exciting about it is first- and second-generation Americans who have cultural ties, birth ties, to other countries may be able to overcome some obstacles that face immigrants and their children because of the demand for people to understand how to fit into those countries," he added.

The hospitality sector also looks set for growth, said Sophia Koropeckyj, economist at Moody's Economy.com in Westchester, Pa., because "there's been a lot of hotel construction and also because there are a lot of international tourists coming in to the United States." The leisure and hospitality sectors are expected to add 1.9 million jobs from 2006 to 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The falling dollar and an aging manufacturing work force are creating opportunities particularly in durable manufacturing, and in export and transportation-warehousing industries that move goods, Koropeckyj said. "Because the dollar has weakened, that has made U.S. manufactured goods more attractive overseas."

Health care will continue to see strong demand among a broad swath of positions encompassing direct patient care and allied fields. Nurses, physical therapists and pharmacists are especially sought after, Challenger said. Opportunities also will abound in energy, both among the traditional oil, gas and nuclear power sector and in development of "green" technology and alternative energy sources, he said.

Professional business services -- including compensation and benefits experts, accountants, lawyers and consultants -- are poised for growth, as well as security fields ranging from guards to information technology, Challenger said. Koropeckyj agreed that professional-service jobs likely will continue to grow because they won't be "heavily affected" by business-cycle weakening.

Vocational, teaching jobs hot too

Other jobs that employers can't fill fast enough are sales representatives, teachers and mechanics, said Melanie Holmes, a vice president who's involved in work-force development at Manpower Inc. in Milwaukee.

"Sales representatives are the No. 1 talent shortage we see in the United States," she said, noting the broad category has been the top crunch area for the past two years. "I don't see that changing."

Job prospects for mechanics are ramping up as fewer people take up the trade and as industrial machinery proliferates, said Arlene Dohm, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Everything is automated in manufacturing now, and as machines are replacing people, people to work on the machines are needed more," she said.

Technicians, managers and executives, truck and delivery drivers, accountants, laborers, and machine operators also are in demand, Holmes said, noting that most of these jobs are safe from potential outsourcing.

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